


A Threefold Binding

by Poetry



Category: Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Changelings, Fae & Fairies, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-17
Updated: 2019-01-17
Packaged: 2019-10-11 21:20:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17454512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poetry/pseuds/Poetry
Summary: Parker and Hardison are changelings, and Eliot knows their true names.





	A Threefold Binding

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lit_luminary](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lit_luminary/gifts).



One of the best ways to con people is by telling the truth.

Parker and Hardison will never be the grifters Sophie wants them to be. But they do their best, given their limitations.

Like when Hardison told Nate, “I bounced through five sets of foster parents until I ended up with Nana.”

Like how Parker doesn’t talk about her childhood at all.

 

**I. Hardison**

“I hate humans,” Parker said to Hardison when they got back from the orphanage job. “I should have brought those kids through a ring to the Other Side.”

It’s the first time Parker has acknowledged what they are out loud. They’d both known, of course, seen the signs: careful lies of omission, a wariness of iron. Hardison had tried to bring it up, sharing a hazy memory of the daughter of an orisha and a faerie queen, born when the stories of European invaders did battle with the stories of West Africa hundreds of years ago – he thinks she might have been his mother, but she’d traded him away for a human child anyway.

(“I don’t talk about that stuff,” Parker had said, with an air of finality.)

“They’d have to send over just as many faerie kids to keep the Balance,” Hardison said. “And you know that ain’t fair. Besides, you don’t hate humans.”

“Yes I do,” Parker said. “I blew up my foster parents.”

(Hardison has met other changelings. They call the humans who raised them their parents. Hardison and Parker say “foster parents,” except when they talk about Nana. Sometimes the human children get the better end of the bargain.)

The door opened. Eliot said, “Parker. I need backup at the casino.”

Parker nodded and leapt out of her office chair. Hardison grinned at her. She flicked her ponytail at him as she turned and left.

 

**II. Parker**

“We have to tell him,” Parker said while Eliot was in the kitchen plating the first course. She could smell something rich and savory, like warm dark oil.

“We don’t have to tell him anything he won’t even  _believe,_ ” Hardison said. “None of my siblings at Nana’s house ever believed it, and I did all kinds of weird-ass – ”

“Sophie believes it,” Parker said.

“She  _what_?”

“I didn’t mean to tell her but she got all  _Sophie_  at me! First she gave me grifting lessons and she tried to make me lie and realized I couldn’t,” Parker said in a rush. “Then she realized you can’t either. That’s why she always introduces us with our fake names, so we don’t have to say them. She didn’t know why at first but she kept guessing and finally she said we’re fae. I told her it sounded silly but she said ‘tell me I’m wrong’ and I couldn’t. But she hasn’t snuck me iron or made me tell the truth about things I don’t want to. So Eliot wouldn’t. He  _wouldn’t._ ”

Hardison said softly, “I never thought he would. That ain’t our man.”

Eliot came in with bowls of steaming consommé garnished with parsley. The look on his face, you’d have thought he knew he was serving a lost faerie prince and a daughter of the Unseelie. Hardison said, “That smells so good, you have no idea. I must have made some kind of good choices in my life to deserve this.”

“You wouldn’t know a good choice if it smacked you upside the head,” Eliot said. “Which is what I’m gonna do if you let this soup go cold.”

When their bowls were empty, his hospitality accepted, Parker said, “Eliot, you know we never lie to you, right?”

“Technically we don’t lie to anyone,” Hardison said. “I don’t know if you, uh, noticed – ” At Eliot’s raised eyebrows, Hardison seemed to remember that he was talking to one of the most observant men in the mortal realms. “Right. Yeah.”

“Technically we don’t lie to anyone, but we really actually don’t lie to you,” Parker said.

Eliot’s mouth went soft in that way that wasn’t a smile, a face Parker always knew she could trust when everything else seemed confusing and fake. “I know.”

“So we’re going to tell you something weird but you have to believe us,” Parker said. “Because we earned it.”

“A hundred times over,” Eliot affirmed.

Hardison and Parker exchanged a look. Hardison nodded. “Okay, so it’s like this. It’s true we’re both kids who got kicked around the foster care system. It’s just that we didn’t get given up by who you might think…”

 

**III. Eliot**

They thundered through the faerie ring in their fine raiment, riding impossible steeds.

The faerie queen rode a camel patterned black and white like a magpie, her head wrapped in indigo cloth and starlight. The Unseelie raven girl wore a trail of clouds and feathers, and her horse’s breath steamed white even on a summer day in Portland. Eliot wouldn’t have known who they were if not for the children clinging to their waists, who would have been perfect miniatures of Parker and Hardison if it hadn’t been for their eyes, flat without that dancing light he’d come to understand was from another world.

Hardison jumped up from the picnic blanket. “Oh God oh God oh God. I knew the whole fresh air thing was a bad idea. Fresh air means woods, and woods means faerie rings, and faerie rings mean twelve kinds of trouble. Where is the damn car?”

Eliot reached up and clamped a hand on Hardison’s hip. “Don’t show fear.”

Parker was in a crouch, watching the faeries ride out from the treeline. Hardison said, “How do  _you_  know how to act around a faerie queen?” But he didn’t flee.

“I know rulers. Warlords.” Eliot looked up at him. “I knew Damien Moreau. He stole children too.”

The faeries stopped before the picnic blanket. The grass around them frosted over, and the light fell on them silvery like moonlight instead of golden summer sun. “We’ve come to claim our children,” the queen said.

“What do you want us for?” Parker spat, still in her predator’s crouch. “You didn’t want us. You traded us away.”

“Legends of you have reached even the faerie realms, daughter,” the raven girl said, the words misting in front of her mouth. “It seems we made a bad trade. Fortunately, we can trade to get you back.” She hoisted the stolen human child in her arms. The child stared, flat-eyed, as if she hadn’t understood.

“No way am I going back there,” Hardison said, looking nervously at the swirling blackness rising up from the faerie ring. “I don’t remember it all that well, it was a long time ago, but I am totally sure y’all don’t have Netflix, and that is just  _not_ acceptable.”

Eliot reached for Parker’s hand, staring certainty into her fae-lit eyes. She took it. They stood, proud and defiant. “You have no claim on them,” Eliot said. “I do.”

The queen thundered, “They are our blood, born in our realm! What claim could you possibly have?”

“I welcomed them to my table, and they ate my food from the mortal realm,” Eliot said. “I claim Parker and Alec Hardison.”

The Unseelie fae tasted the air with her tongue, like a snake. “You are no being of power. You are only a mortal man. I can taste death on you. Changeling children all eat food made by mortals, and they are not bound to this realm.”

Fear clutched cold at Eliot’s heart, though he refused to show it. Parker and Hardison told him about faerie law, and he knew his claim abided by it. But he couldn’t quite believe the faeries would follow the law instead of declaring themselves above it, as every other warlord Eliot had known would do. He kissed Parker on the mouth, tasting chocolate, a final goodbye if her mother stole her away.

“The way I understand it, if a human goes to the Other Side and accepts the hospitality of the fae by eating their food, they’re bound there forever. Changeling children aren’t bound to this realm by our food because if we welcome them as the humans they were traded for, we don’t know who they really are, so it’s no true hospitality. I gave them my hospitality knowing full well who they were, and they accepted it. I claim Parker and Alec Hardison.”

“You can only claim our children by their true names,” the faerie queen said. “Your claim by their false human names has no power.”

Fear dried Eliot’s mouth and rooted him to the spot, but still he refused to show it. The children the faeries had stolen in trade for Parker and Hardison were changed from their time on the Other Side, and if the faeries traded them back, they might not survive here. Eliot kissed Hardison on the mouth, tasting candied fruit, a farewell for him if the queen his mother stole him away.

“Hardison,” Eliot said, still looking him in the eye. “Tell the lady you’re Miles Morales.”

“You know I wish I could,” Hardison said. “I cosplayed as him at ComicCon – ”

“ – I know, your costume crap was all over the place – ”

“ – but I can’t, because I ain’t him, and that’d be a lie.”

Eliot placed a hand to the back of his neck, drawing him down. “Tell her you’re Alec Hardison.”

Hardison – Alec – swallowed hard. He turned slowly from Eliot’s eyes to the queen’s fathomless ones. “My true name is Alec Hardison.”

The queen  _hissed_.

From the raven girl’s arms, the girl exchanged for Parker spoke, her voice high and piping but precise. “If you claim them a third time, they will be bound forever to the mortal realm, and they will die as mortals.”

Eliot’s throat closed up. He’d promised he’d protect Parker and Alec until his dying day, but he couldn’t ask them to die for him.

Alec took Eliot’s hand and kissed him on the cheek. “I’d rather die with Eliot than live forever in Crazy No Internet Child Stealing Land,” Alec said. “Y’all want us back because we’re legends. Eliot just wants someone to cook dinner for when he comes home.” His kiss glowed warm on Eliot’s cheek like a beam of sunlight.

Parker took Eliot’s hand and kissed him on the forehead. “I always knew I’d die here. That’s what makes it so important to do the right thing.” Her kiss felt as heavy on his forehead as the impact of hitting the ground from a height.

“I claim Parker and Alec Hardison as my own.” Eliot glared at the faeries. “Now get the hell out of our city.”


End file.
